Monday, May 9, 2016

Reasons to Focus on Print: An authors decision in a digital age

Several people have been asking me about what Jenny Trout
reported about my sales in her recent blog post about returns. It’s been enough
people that I figure I should probably write something up about it. So here
goes.

Yes. We have all but abandoned digital releases in favor of print
and audio. This wasn’t a decision we had
decided lightly, so before I start getting emails from people saying I’m
disparaging digital work… let me explain.

Historically we have always sold poorly in e book. We have
38 books out right now, between our SA Price, Stella and Audra Price names, my
Anastasia Virgas name and my other pen name Dagmar Avery.Sales are low for us, and have always been.
We have been okay with it, because we aren’t mainstream with what we write. But
it’s gotten worse.

With the influx of books being uploaded to Amazon every day
(I believe the last count was 700+ a day!)Our limited visibility was further
cut down, and then with the advent of this returns bullshit, sales were set to
nothing.

We rarely make 50 sales TOTAL in ebook a month, and during
release week, hell release day, we are inundated with almost if not HALF of the
sales for the released book returned. That is no way to be able to keep
releasing books.

Then we looked at out print and Audio. Whereas audio sales
aren’t huge, we make more on them. And print? Print we do awesome with. When
you are selling double what you’re selling a month in e book in print… well it
tells me some things. It tells me E books are not the medium to get our work
out there with. It tells me print is not dead, and I need to focus on what
works for us.

Here’s a breakdown.

We are lucky. When we put out a book, I don’t have to pay
extra for formatting or Cover work, so our overhead is low… between 300-500$
for edits. Now in order to put another book out, I need to make back what I put
into a release. So in e book, if a book sells for 4.99 (the majority of the
books sell for this) I have to sell a minimum of 144 copies to break even.
That’s not even making a profit. As the E sales we have average between 2-4 a
book a month… at the high end it would take me 36 MONTHS to make that money to
simply edit the work, back.

Now, in print, selling at 12.99 we would have to sell 27
copies. WHICH DO YOU THINK IS EASIER?

At Con, for a new release, I sell books at 10$. This means I
need to sell between 30-38 while there. Considering we always sell well at con,
this is not a hardship.

Most would say E book is the easier way to go. But not for
us. No, not at all. So selling 27 print
book means I have the ability to release another book in a few months.

36 months to earn out on e-book? Not feasible. At all.

I realize readers are pissed about this. Certain readers
don’t read print, don’t do audio. To be quite honest, the amount of readers
that only read e book and read us is so low, I can’t even count it. Yes, losing
any sale is hard but consider the other side of this.

No E books means my books aren’t being pirated. It means
they aren’t being read and then returned, and most importantly, it means I’m
not checking KDP daily and getting more and more frustrated that for the 6th
day in a row I haven’t sold a damn thing.

I like the idea of a return to the printed word as well, digital while
easier and all but immediate, can't compare to the tactile wonder of
holding a book in your hands.

The 1-15 sales I get a month on a .99-4.99 book isn’t worth
the stress and the feelings that I am not good enough. I know I am, and the
work we do is. Shit visibility is the culprit, but that doesn’t compute when you
are constantly tearing your hair out over nonexistent sales. Maybe things will
change in the future, but for now, this is the best course of action for us. I always liked print better anyway.

So I'm going to open up the discussion here for those that feel the need.